Anticipating Life
by ObliviousTrace
Summary: COMPLETE. A journey. A volume of plays. Three people. Hermione tangles herself deeper into literature. Art reflects life, life art.
1. Prologue

A/N: Before we begin this little journey, a few words. _Anticipating Life_ will be a chaptered story, but it will not be particularly long. The story is divided into five parts:the prologue, "Hamlet," "Macbeth," "King Lear," and the epilogue. The middle three sections may be divided into smaller chapter postings, depending on how fast I write, how long they are, etc. This takes place after Half-Blood Prince and takes all the books into account. I hope you enjoy. As always, please review and comment.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter very obviously does not belong to me. The more's the pity.

Anticipating Life

"Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose." Oscar Wilde

_**Prologue**_

It's true she is a fool for the written word.

She consumes poetry like fine wine; she bathes herself in novels and beautiful nouns. Sometimes, in conversation, someone will utter a seemingly innocent phrase and her mind will cling to it. The other will talk around her but she will be stuck, her being reeling around one or two or three words.

She tries not to let it show. She doesn't tell people the effect words have upon her. She doesn't read tomes of poetry or plays by Shakespeare where anyone can see. Facts and figures and now spells are so much more impressive, after all, and words are too personal and too painful to reveal.

And so now it comes to this.

Hermione stands before the shelves in her room and trails her fingers gently across the row of books, feeling the different spines and bidding silent farewell to each of them. On such a journey as the one she now faces, books are frivolous and heavy. She could, of course, use a shrinking spell, or perhaps a lightening charm. Then she could carry several books she wanted and some useful magic books, besides.

That seems like cheating to her.

So in the end, she chooses only one. One book that she will lug over English moors and Scottish heaths and who knows where else. One book that, somehow, must be enough.

She chooses Shakespeare.

She pulls his Complete Works from the shelf and hugs it to her chest, so tight it's becoming painful. If she has a large, book-shaped bruise there the next day, she won't be surprised. Neither will she care.

In this volume, she has love and death, war and betrayal, friendship and enemies. She has battles and swordfights and kisses and jokes and drinking and dancing and crying.

It will have to be enough.

Her pack is full now, so she picks it up and slings it over her shoulder and goes downstairs to where her boys are waiting.

They look at her and she smiles gently at them and together they leave.


	2. Hamlet

_**Hamlet**_

It's raining now, as it has been raining all week.

Hermione pokes her head out of the tent and frowns. A particularly large drip splashes onto her nose and she squeaks slightly, taken by surprise. She draws her head back in and turns around.

Ron smiles at her, amused by her disgruntled expression. She gives a mock pout and swats him playfully on the arm. He responds by grabbing her about the waist, and soon they are engaged in a full tickling match.

It ends with him on top of her and tense silence and heavy breathing.

Hermione waits for Harry to walk in, for awkward muttering and averted eyes and quick springing apart. But he doesn't. He's off by himself, as he often is, despite her and Ron's insistence upon bodyguards. Harry said they needed more firewood and the other two decided not to mention the large stack they'd already collected, letting him go into the woods alone. They know he needs it.

So Harry won't walk in on them and she can't break Ron's gaze and his weight on her is as comfortable as it is unsettling. Something is coiled deep in the pit of her stomach and she's afraid to move. His eyes keep glancing at her mouth, and she finds his lips suddenly more fascinating than they've ever been.

He finally kisses her or she kisses him and they're grabbing frantically at each other. It's been so long, she's waited _so long_, and now it's here, it's her and Ron and it's what it always was supposed to be.

And after, as they lay in each other's arms, breathless and naked and sweaty and terrified, that's when Harry walks in.

Hermione doesn't spring away though, she just blushes, snuggles her face into Ron's chest, and misses the grin that passes between the two boys before Harry backs quickly out of the tent.

Ron whispers the word "love" in her ear and she whispers it back and thinks that she's going to burst with the perfection of it all.

* * *

When she was younger, she fell in love with Hamlet.

She supposed later that it was because he was so mysterious. His character was so complex and confusing, so full of shadows and beguiling darkness. She had decided that she would love a Hamlet, or no one else.

So when she realized she loved Ron, her world was turned around. Now, reflecting, she doesn't know if she was the fool now or then.

Ron is no Hamlet. He is light and grins and fierce blushes and kisses that leave her dazed and spinning, but he is no Hamlet. Hermione wonders why she didn't fall in love with Harry, or even with Malfoy, for they fulfill any romantic girl's dream of the dark, broodingly tragic hero.

But now she is with Ron, she is finally with Ron, and they go to collect the wood instead of Harry. Her back is often covered in scratches from the bruising bark of the trees, but the rest of her doesn't care. Their search is so far fruitless and the danger is increasing, but now there are weeks full of secret smiles and cuddles by fires and light, tantalizing touches.

And then one night the sky rips apart.

The rain floods down but that's not the worst. The people storming their camp wear hoods and masks and shoot blazing jets of light across the sky. The three of them rush out of their tent and draw their wands to do battle.

Turns out there were only five Death Eaters. The surprise attack made it seem like there were more. It also turns out that the three of them are more adept than they thought. She stuns two and Ron stuns one and she's not sure if the two that Harry causes to fall are stunned at all.

Then they are running around, gathering their things, getting ready to disapparate immediately. The tent has collapsed and their possessions are strewn everywhere, all around the camp, all getting muddier and wetter by each passing second.

Hermione spots her Shakespeare on the ground near one of the fallen Death Eaters. She bends to pick it up and starts straightening. Then she stops because the man's hood has fallen off and his eyes are staring sightless at the sky. No life flickers in his face and Hermione can't look away.

"Hermione!"

She hears her name and jerks up and her eyes meet Harry's. He sees the man he killed at her feet and for a moment, the two of them just stare at each other. She can't speak. She thinks she wants to scream.

Then Ron is grabbing her arm and the three of them are running again and when they're a decent distance away, they disapparate.

They appear in a small clearing where it's not raining. Hermione can't look over at Harry. When he speaks, his voice is heavy.

"Come on," he says. "Let's set up camp. We'll keep searching in the morning."

With a flick of his wand, the tent is ready, and the three of them soon fall asleep. Hermione clings to Ron and dreams about the dead Death Eater. She wakes up in the early dawn and runs outside to throw up.

On the fourth day after the attack, as Hermione shakily wipes her mouth and drinks some water to cleanse it, the way she has the past four mornings, she suddenly realizes something.

And she was always such a smart witch, the smartest in her class, and it frightens her and angers her that she's forgotten _that simple_, that elementary.

Because she's always been the smartest, though, she realizes there's no way she can keep the baby.


	3. Hamlet II

**_Hamlet – II_**

Hermione begins counting.

First she counts the mornings she wakes up sick and sweaty (_five, six, a whole week now, ten, eleven)_. Then she begins counting months. She counts two months until it shows enough that she has to explain to Harry and Ron. She counts four months until she begins slowing them down, becoming a nuisance, seven months until she should stay indoors and stop running, eight months until…

She won't complete that figure in her mind.

It's all no good, she thinks. It's all gone wrong and it's all no good and this is not the way she'd wanted to have Ron's baby. Not like this, not in the rain and the mud in a dilapidated tent. Not with his worried glances and Harry's near constant silence. Not with the tension and the fear and the danger and the always present thought, _dear god, we're going to die._

She decides practically the first day. There's nothing to decide, really. She recognizes what she must do, and then spends days rationalizing. Hermione's always believe that every woman should choose; it's one of her campaigns that she keeps up in the Muggle world, during the summer holidays. Now that she's faced with it though, she has an uncomfortable feeling that has nothing to do with the damp and the cold.

The question remains, however, of when, and how. She's read about methods, of course. Hermione's too smart of a witch not to have a fall back plan, even if she did make such a stupid, fatal mistake. No magic, she thinks. She can't explain why it must be done without magic (_must be done the natural way_, she surprises herself by thinking), just like she didn't know why she keeps lugging her tome of Shakespeare around. Ron makes fun of her sometimes, of her insistence on carrying such a heavy and frivolous book. Harry just blinks owlishly behind his glasses, his piercing green eyes reading her better than she can fathom. He reads from it sometimes, reads it and swallows and goes off by himself.

So no magic. She knows of herbs that can induce a miscarriage is mixed properly, and she decides upon them, just needs to gather them now. Ophelia gathered pansies and rue, Ophelia searched desperately for violets, but Hermione looks for a different plant, a smaller, drabber, more sinister plant. She has the rest of the ingredients in her kit, so this one is the last and most important.

She finds it one morning as she rinses out their clothes in a stream. Hermione stares and leaves and returns and finally picks it. She crushes the leaves slightly and all day long the bitter smell lingers on her fingertips.

* * *

Hermione's not sure when she'll be able to do it; she just knows that it has to be done as soon as possible. She can't even remember what the effects are supposed to be, exactly. She knows the process and she knows the result, she just dreads that mysterious in between, that moment when anything really could happen.

They're picking up the pace, now. The last place afforded no prize for them. One day Hermione realizes they're heading directly in London and when she tells the boys, they agree less reluctantly than she'd expected that they should stop at Number 12.

Ron's always worried, it seems. A permanent furrow has set into his brow and he always frowns when he glances at Hermione. They haven't slept together since the night of the attack, since she realized she was pregnant. She's never explained to him why she's distanced herself. He probably assumes it has to do with the attack and the killing of the Death Eaters. They don't talk as much anymore. They walk and search and occasionally fight, but they never talk. Piling up between them is a huge mound of things unsaid. Hermione can tell that even Ron sees this.

She smiles humorlessly and knows that hers trumps all.

If Harry's noticed the increased tension between his two best friends, he hasn't mentioned anything. However, he accepts Hermione's proposition of stopping in London with relief, and she thinks that he might be desperate for some other company.

Despite being the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix, Number 12 Grimmauld place is oddly quiet when they arrive. Tonks lets them in, gasping when she sees them on the step, dirty and thin and exhausted. She ushers them into the hall and hugs them fiercely each in turn, squeezing the breath out of their bodies.

"Remus!" She shouts down the hall. In response, Mrs. Black's portrait starts wailing. They hear cursing and footsteps and finally Remus appears, running around the corner. He stops in his tracks when he sees the trio of tired teenagers. His mouth opens, closes again. He swallows.

"I had a feeling you'd show up here sometime," he finally says, his voice raspy.

Remus and Tonks lead them into the sitting room, sit them by the fire, cover them with blankets and fill them with tea and soup.

"How are…" Ron begins. "How is my family?"

The two adults exchange glances and Hermione can feel Ron tense where his body is pressed against hers.

"What?" He asks. "What's happened?"

Tonks grasps Remus' hand.

"They're fine, Ron. They're all terribly worried about you, but they're fine. Your parents are doing well. Your Dad's really making a name for himself at the ministry! Bill and Charlie and Fred and George are all invaluable to the Order, and Ginny's back at school, where she should be. "

No one glances at Harry, but Hermione can tell that everyone wants to

"Then what?" Ron asks again, persistently. "What's wrong, Tonks?"

The pink-haired witch looks imploringly at Remus, who suddenly looks even more tired.

"You haven't asked about Percy yet."

Ron draws in a sharp breath. Under the blanket, he clutches Hermione's thigh so tightly she thinks she'll have a bruise the next day.

Remus looks levelly at Ron and the sorrow in his eyes is so great Hermione wants to cry.

"Last month, Percy was spotted with a group of Death Eaters. One of our spies later confirmed that he's joined them."

The redhead stands up abruptly, spilling tea and soup everywhere, and strides out of the room. Harry leaps up and follows him, calling his name. Hermione watches them go and feels utterly helpless. She clutches her stomach without thinking about it before remembering that Remus and Tonks are watching her.

"I…" she stands up shakily. "I think I should go lie down upstairs."

She goes to the room she and Ginny always shared and lies upon the musty bedspread. She closes her eyes and tries to will herself asleep, but to no avail. Hermione sits up and suddenly, resolutely, performs a locking charm on the door. She goes over to her pack and begins pulling out the herbs and ingredients one by one by one.

It doesn't take very long to mix them, and Hermione stares dubiously at the small potion she's created. If this doesn't work, she doesn't know what else she'll do.

So she drinks it in one gulp and can't help but think of the Polyjuice Potion in 2nd year. Then, her stomach suddenly seizing with pain, she lies down upon her bed and screws her eyes tightly together and tries not to start sobbing.

When the blood comes, gushing, she almost screams. She twists and turns upon the stained sheets and bites the corner of the blanket in agony. Sweat rolling down her face, Hermione has no way of knowing if she drank the potion five minutes or five hours ago. All she can do it wait it out and try desperately to remain quiet, cursing herself for not casting a silencing charm. Her wand is on the other side of the room, but even if it was at hand she doubts she could perform any kind of magic. She starts to think that she's poisoned herself, and in her current state of mind, she doesn't know if it was unintentional or not.

There is a gentle rap on the door. "Hermione?" a worried voice calls, and she realizes she must not be as quiet as she thought.

She props herself up on her elbow. "Go away!" She shouts breathlessly. There must be enough noise for the person on the other door to be sufficiently worried, though, and a simple "alohamora" breaks through her locking charm. Tonks rushes into the room and stops dead, her eyes huge.

"Oh Merlin," She whispers, gazing at the sobbing, bloody girl lying before her. A small moan from Hermione snaps her into action, and the young Auror quickly shuts the door, casts locking and silencing spells strong enough to repel most anything, conjures some hot water and a stack of towels, then goes and sits on the bed beside the brunette.

"Shh," she whispers, gently pushing Hermione's damp hair out of her sweat drenched face. "Sweet Circe, darling, what did you do?"

Hermione just groans in response and shakes her head, tears welling out of her eyes. Tonks frowns and stands up, going over to the dresser where herbs and potions are strewn. She picks up a couple of the plants, sniffs the empty mortar, and slowly a look of horror crosses her face.

Tonks moves back over to the bed and sits down again, gathering Hermione in her arms. The younger girl willingly clings to her, sobbing and shaking. Tonks murmurs endearments against her hair and strokes her back. The bleeding has stopped now, and Tonks gently cleans Hermione, performs a charm on the sheets, and soon has the weak girl tucked comfortably in bed, all evidence of her ordeal gone everywhere except her pale, drawn face.

Hermione obviously is drowsy and needs to sleep, but Tonks can't refrain from asking a few questions.

"Was it Ron's?" She probes quietly, waiting for a response. Hermione nods.

"We…" The brunette draws in a small breath. "He doesn't know. Please don't tell him. Please. Please don't hate me!" Her voice rises and a note of hysteria creeps into it. Tonks quickly squeezes her hand to reassure her.

"I don't hate you, Hermione. I understand." At the other girl's dubious look, Tonks smiles sadly. "War is no place for a baby. I just wish you'd come to me. There are charms that are completely painless. Well, physically, anyway."

Hermione stares at her and begins to suspect that there is more to the sorrow in Remus' eyes than she knew before. It is her last coherent thought before she drifts off to sleep.

The next morning, the trio leaves Grimmauld Place. Tonks hugs them all in turn, taking extra care with Hermione. "You'll be alright," she whispers in her ear before she releases her. Remus hugs them next, and part of Hermione aches for him when she contemplates the possibilities of what Tonks said last night.

The three teenagers leave silently and don't talk for most of the day. If Hermione is paler and weaker than usual, the boys don't notice. Ron is too wrapped up in thoughts of Percy, and she can only guess at what's on Harry's mind.

Grimmauld Place is in her head most of the day, thoughts of that horrific night crowding her brain. Hermione gently touches her stomach and feels an expanse grow and yawn and stretch within her.


	4. Macbeth

**_Macbeth_**

She still can't forgive Harry.

There's a certain heaviness that wraps around the three of them now, a certain irreparable sense that they have grown up.

Hermione can't be a child anymore, she thinks. She can't be a child because she almost had a child and she is (was?) in love.

Everything's changed. The three of them are closer and farther apart than they've ever been. She and Ron don't sleep together anymore. She hasn't kissed him since before London. Instead, the three of them sleep intertwined, bodies pressed together for warmth and comfort. Deep down, down in her deepest, aching marrow, she knows that she and Ron are no longer sheandRon and will never be again.

Hermione thinks that Ron knows this too.

She wants to cry for him sometimes, when he grabs on so tightly to her and Harry in the night. His family is now so shattered, so ripped and destroyed, that it is this, it is this trio and this triangle that keeps him going.

After all, he always had to be a pillar of something.

She can look at Harry now, she can look at him and talk to him and smile at him and love him as much as ever again. She just can't forgive him, because sometimes the still, cold face of a man whose life is not-there flickers beneath her eyelids. She just can't forgive him because if she does, she might start to forgive herself.

And dear god, it was her _baby_.

To distract herself, she pulls out her Shakespeare and lets it fall randomly open in her lap. Hermione reads until Lady Macbeth tells her husband how she would kill a nursing child rather than betray her promises.

She can't read more. She can't read more and she hates Shakespeare and damnit, why did he have to know so much?

So she turns to _The Tempest _instead and eventually falls asleep dreaming of something rich and strange. The boys come in later and cover her up and snuggle around different sides of her.

Hermione wakes up in the middle of the night and feels their chests moving and their warm breath tickling the sides of her face and she smiles because really, this is the best it will get.

* * *

She wakes up again, early in the morning. Harry and Ron are still asleep but she decides to get up anyway. The air is crisp and cold and for a moment, she casts a longing glance back at the tent. Then Hermione blushes uncomfortably and realizes that she needs to relieve herself.

She tiptoes out of camp quietly, so as not to wake the boys, and finds a secluded area. Afterwards, she goes to the nearby stream (they always want to camp by running water and Ron's developed an uncanny sense of where to find it) to wash her hands. Straightening up, Hermione wipes her wet and cold hands against her shirt, willing the stiff digits to warm up.

She hears a crack and her head snaps around. And it's what she's always been afraid of, because it's a man and he looks wild and he has a wand and he's grinning and leering and coming closer and she knows thinks hopes that there's a mark on his arm.

And she's alone.

Hermione's forgotten about Harry, forgotten about Ron, forgotten that she could just call their names or scream and they would come running. She's forgotten about them and she backs up and trips and falls into the stream, cold water and sharp rocks slamming the breath out of her.

The man laughs.

"Well, aren't you a pretty little thing?" He says and comes nearer. Hermione's eyes widen and she starts scrabbling for a rock, for something, _anything_, because she understands what he means and oh god she doesn't want that to happen.

Her wand is still in the tent. Why is her wand still in the tent?

She closes her eyes and bites back a whimper and in her head she screams a spell as loud as she can.

The thin stick of wood flies through the air and into her hand and the man looks shocked. She realizes he didn't know she was a witch.

She takes advantage of his surprise then and points her wand and shouts the first spell she can think of.

Hermione hates that it was _sectumsempra._

He's lying on the ground now, and she thinks he's stopped breathing. She doesn't know if the liquid on her face is water or blood, but she finally realizes that she's gotten cold, so cold. She's still sitting in the stream and she's still covered in blood and the man is still not moving.

"Hermione?"

She hears the incredulous voice and looks up and sees Harry staring at her. His green eyes dart from her to the man and they take in everything immediately. He walks over to her and gently helps her to her feet. She lets out a sound then, a strangled little sob, and he holds her to him. She clings tightly to his chest and whispers _I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry_ and _I forgive you_ and she thinks that he might understand.

He helps her hide the body (neither of them have the strength or the will to bury it). He helps her cast _scourgify_ on her clothes and his, where her body pressed against him. He promises that he won't tell Ron, when she asks. He says no words of condemnation, no _I told you so_, just helps her and loves her.

Before they walk back to camp (Ron must be awake by now, he'll be wondering), she goes one last time to rinse her hands in the stream, scrubbing them furiously. She looks up to find Harry watching her, those green, green eyes unreadable.

"What?" she finally asks, her voice cracking slightly.

Her question jolts him out of his reverie.

"Nothing," Harry replied. "Just, for a moment, you reminded me of this character in a play I saw once. I was just trying to remember where." He smiles gently and turns away, heading towards camp.

She watches him walk away, mouth open, because she knows exactly who he was talking about. She wonders if he knows just what he's done.

Her cold, white, (_red, red, the whole world is red now and her hands are no exception drenched soaked covered and she didn't know his name and she never got a chance to give the other one a name boy or girl)_ hands clench automatically.

Maybe he knows exactly what he's done.


	5. King Lear

A/N: Finally updated! Wow, it's been a long time. However, there are only one or two more parts left, and I have them sketched out, so hopefully they'll be done soon. Maybe even by the end of the week, if I'm lucky (don't quote me on that).

_**King Lear - I**_

Hermione makes mistakes.

She often pretends that she doesn't, that she knows it all. But everyone makes mistakes, and she is no exception.

She can justify most anything. She slept with Ron because she loved him. She killed the Death Eater in order to live. She killed her baby because she had no other choice.

But try as she might, there is no way she can justify this.

Harry is lonely. He is lonely and Ron has gone home to visit his family – a hard step for him, but necessary. He will be back in a week, he promises.

So he is lonely and they are alone. And it is just so natural, so easy, to move closer to him and take his hand and make him look at her and trace his lips with her thumb and lean in and he is lonely and he responds.

Then they are kissing and she is pulling him down on top of her and his hands are moving everywhere and she has never felt so alive, so on fire…

Hermione wakes up.

Sweat rolls off her forehead. She shifts her leg slightly and feels Harry, lying beside her. Ron is gone. It's only the two of the sharing the tent. And each time she closes her eyes all she can imagine is the two of them together.

This is the biggest mistake of her life.

She sits up, the blankets falling to her waist. She does not look over at the boy next to her. If she looks, she will be unable to stop.

_Oh god._

Ron.

She and Ron are dead. She and Ron died in with the man in the river. She and Ron died with baby. Her baby.

There is a part of her that will always ache, she knows. Some empty piece of her will always throb for her child and red hair and freckles and lopsided grins and lopsided houses.

But that empty piece of her is silenced by the pull her entire body feels towards the boy (man, really) that sleeps quietly beside her.

She could forgive Harry for being everything she thought she needed. She could forgive Ron for never being quite enough. But try as she might, she can find no forgiveness for herself.

Hermione is almost shocked by the depth of her self-loathing.

"Mione?" he mumbles into his pillow, turning slightly towards her. She jumps and looks over, sees those brilliant green eyes half open, watching her.

"You okay?" he asks.

She nods past the lump in her throat.

He smiles and something in her dies.

"Go back to sleep. You look tired." He yawns and holds out his arms. Of course. He wants to cuddle, they cuddle, they've always cuddled, because they're alone and he loves her like a sister.

But if she touches him just now she will break, and above all, she must hold herself together. So she shakes her head and starts to get up, trying to move outside the tent to where she can breathe and think.

He catches her arm in a fluid, graceful movement, the kind she's always envied. The movement carries him into a sitting position. The blankets are off of both of them now, so she can see his bare torso and pause to wonder how something can be so beautiful.

"What's the matter?" Harry looks worried, expectant. He thinks she'll tell him. Ever since he found her by the river, covered in blood, he has been waiting for her to speak.

This is the moment, she knows. She could tell him about her child, and why she can't even cry anymore. She doesn't, because if she tells him about Ron's baby he may never look at her in the way she needs him to so desperately.

She doesn't tell him, but she does turn back and touch her hand to his face and traces his lips with her thumb. Neither of them is breathing and his eyes are confused and scared and he watches her, frozen.

Hermione kisses Harry. Hermione kisses Harry. She kisses him and pours everything that wakes her at night into the kiss and when he does nothing, she pulls away.

They stare at each other. The tent is too small. Nothing like this has ever happened to Hermione, and nothing will ever be worse.

He grabs her then, with one of those graceful movements of his, and he is ravaging her mouth as if he wants to devour her and she clutches at his shoulders for balance. As quickly as it begins it ends, him wrenching his mouth away and leaving the tent.

She falls back onto the blankets, lips still parted, watching the cloth doors flutter slightly in the breeze.

Hermione hates herself.


	6. King Lear II

_**King Lear – II**_

This is what keeps Hermione going.

He kissed back.

Harry loves Ginny. She knows this. He loves her but must move beyond her in the same way that Hamlet loved Ophelia and Macbeth loved his Lady. Harry loves Ginny like Hamlet would, and he loves Hermione like a Cordelia, a sweet treasure Cordelia, a sister, a daughter that must be nurtured and sheltered and protected but none of that matters because _he kissed back._

Hermione stumbles out of the tent and tries to contemplate just what exactly she has done. She wants to vomit and she wants to scream and cry and some secret part of her wants to dance with joy. She breathes the fresh air, too much too quickly, and her head is light and her legs unsteady. Her hands go to her stomach, a reflexive gesture that is now ingrained into her subconscious. She looks around the camp, at the fire pit full of ashes, the dwindling woodpile, the few possessions strewn idly around, the tin plates and cups, the log where she and Harry sat the night before.

It is so lonely, so dismally empty without her boys, without Ron's smiles and Harry.

She has ruined everything.

Ron will come back and she won't tell him about this (just like she won't tell him about the child he will never get to hold) and she and Harry will never mention it and eventually Ginny will find them and Hermione will never love again. That is her lot in life.

She hears a twig snap and she looks up. He is back, standing on the other side of the camp, staring at her. He is breathing heavily, as if he has been running from something. Maybe he has.

"This isn't right," he says, and something inside is happy to hear that his voice is hoarse, strained.

She nods dumbly.

"This means nothing," he says, and starts walking towards her.

_This means everything_, she knows, and then the distance between them is closed and she is lifted in his arms and god, when did Harry get so strong?

He carries her to the tent and lays her down gently on the blanket, a sharp contrast to the frenzied way their hands and mouths move over each other.

Harry breaks the silence only once, his sweaty forehead pressed to hers, his body flush against hers, the air straining against them.

"What is this, Hermione?" He murmurs, his mouth against her cheek, lips tracing the shell of her ear. "What is this?"

Words fail her then. She could express in impassioned odes and sonnets what Ron meant to her. She could and she had. But no amount of words or couplets can help her say what brand of love it was she felt for this dark-haired boy. All she knows is that nothing was more precious to her than the sound of her name on his lips or the track of his hands.

She draws him back to her mouth and flies apart.


	7. King Lear III

_**King Lear – III**_

It all comes down to salt and mystery.

Things start blending together. Days, nights, all melt into one continuous blur. Hermione feels as if she is forgetting things, everything she has ever learned becoming one fluid continuum where nothing is separate.

It is dawn when Harry kisses her and night when he is asleep. This is all she knows for sure.

They are operating on borrowed time. Ron will return within in the week, then the search for the Horcruxes must resume. With the search comes real life, comes the fact that anyone of them might die at any moment. Even if they all live, even if they do the unthinkable and pull off this mad, suicidal escapade, there will be no room in that new world for them to be together.

But for this small oasis in time, Harry is hers and she, she will always be his.

She is bordering on giddy, she is so insanely happy. They laugh together, and there is nothing lovelier than his smile as he watches her cook breakfast or stoke the fire. They splash in the stream together. He dunks her, she shrieks, they kiss underwater. He holds her by the fire and they look at stars and he makes her laugh with funny stories about Dudley. They talk about the Muggle world, about all the little things they miss, like air conditioning and television.

Hermione is giddy, but she is also scared, so scared, because each second she falls more frighteningly in love with him. There was a fairy tale she read once, "The Goose Girl," about a king who asked his daughters how they loved him. The youngest one, the purest one, said she loved him like salt, for every dish is bland without it. The king, of course, like Lear, like all vain fathers, punishes her for this admission, thinking that she does not truly love him, hating the comparison to plain, common salt.

But Hermione knows that is the only comparison to make. The Goose Girl loved her father like salt, and so did Cordelia, and oh god, Hermione loves Harry like that. She loves him like the taste of salt on his skin, like the tracks of moisture that trail down her face and catch on her lips. She now knows why summers were always too long and too flat, why her heart always shuddered to a stop when he was injured again and again and again, because he is Harry and the world is bland without him.

Ron owls them to say he'll be coming back the next morning. I've missed you both, he says. I've been worried. I'm excited to see you.

That night, when Harry turns to Hermione and kisses her shoulder, slipping his hand up the oversized shirt she sleeps in, neither of them says this is the last time, or this can't continue. Then again, neither of them really has to.

Hermione closes her eyes and leans her head back, letting Harry's lips travel up her throat. It's different tonight, slower and smoother, less desperate. She keeps her eyes shut and memorizes the feel of his light stubble grazing her cheek as he reaches her mouth. She arches into his hands and she tells herself that she will never forget this.

It ends, it always ends, and Hermione watches him sleep one last time. Her knees curled to her chest, arms wrapped around her chest, she watches the gentle rise fall of his chest.

Nowhere in this flesh and blood and intake of breath world is there anything more beautiful or more tragic than the man she loves sleeping.

Hermione waits.


	8. Epilogue

**_A/N:_** Finally over. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!

_**Epilogue**_

"Three of them, you say?"

The old man nods and clamps his lips tightly around his pipe.

"Passed through at about six, half past, this morning, heading north," he mumbles around the battered looking piece of wood, shifting his weight to his other leg. He leaned back against the rundown fence. "Two boys, 'bout seventeen or so, one girl."

"What did they look like?"

The man deliberates, moistening his cracked lips with his tongue. "Tall, both of the boys," he says in a cloud of tobacco smoke. "A carrot top and a dark one. Tired looking. The dark one had glasses, I think. The girl was shorter, skinny, almost as pretty as you." He leers a little at the young woman in front of them.

She takes a very small step back under his gaze. "Thank you," she says smoothly. "I appreciate your help." She turns to leave.

"What are you doing on your own out here, anyway?"

She turns back slightly, smiling, her red hair gently moving in the breeze.

"I'm reclaiming something that's mine."

The old man harrumphs and coughs a little, chewing on his pipe. "Look a little young to be traveling alone."

"I can take care of myself." She starts to leave, then turns and heads back.

"The dark boy," she pauses, uncertain of how to proceed. "Did he look – could you tell if – did he look – happy?"

The old man shrugs. "Not one way or the other, as far as I could tell." He draws on his pipe and thinks. He remembers something. "Couldn't keep his eyes off the girl, though. Boys, eh?"

She swallows. "Yeah. Boys. Thank you."

She turns and walks away. The man blinks. He must not have slept well the night before, because he could swear that she disappears into thin air at the top of the hill. He coughs, dismisses it as idle fancy, and goes back inside his cottage.


End file.
